Seasonal allergies may only occur in particular seasons, but it’s a reaction that needs immediate care due to severe symptoms of ear congestion or itchy sinuses – and what better way to extend care than with a comprehensive nursing care plan.
Care plans are a strategic approach necessary to streamline treatment for diseases. Moreover, it’s an intricate system that determines the main problem, diagnosis, and its effects. Due to this, creating an organized care plan is vital as it needs to detail the patient’s condition.
If you’re looking to improve your care plan writing skills, here is the best guide for you:
Seasonal Allergies: Definition and Symptoms
Before you start writing your care plan, knowing more about your patient’s condition is best. In this case, your patient is experiencing allergic rhinitis, a seasonal allergy that responds to pollen.
After contact with pollen, your patient may experience common symptoms such as sneezing, stuffy, itchy, or runny nose, coughing, itchy or watery eyes, and headaches. However, prolonged exposure may result in severe symptoms such as recurrent headaches and fatigue.
In a worst-case scenario where your patient is also asthmatic, they could be prone to experience an asthma attack during their allergy.
Components of A Nursing Care Plan
A care plan comprises a five-step system: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Since you already know your patient has allergic rhinitis, it’s best to analyze whether they’re only experiencing minor or severe symptoms. You can accurately pinpoint the best intervention to help your patient.
On the other hand, doctor care plans can even include a more detailed health record that includes medication and the hospital of choice. You could include antihistamines which work best for different allergies, or you could add eye drops to reduce symptoms of itchiness. With a doctor’s in-depth care plans, health insurance is also listed, where you could add medical aid such as a Singulair Coupon and insurance policies or to further the help you extend to a patient.
Steps to Write A Nursing Care Plan
Here, you’ll learn how to further your care with an in-depth guide on writing your care plan. Moreover, you’ll gain more insight into each of the five steps:
Assessment
The first step to writing your care plan is assessment. Here, you’ll need to collect subjective and objective data. You’ll need to obtain verbal statements from the patient, their family, caretakers, or friends and the patient’s vital signs, such as temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure.
You could look for outward signs in the nose and ears for allergic rhinitis. Outward signs could also include persistent mouth breathing, frequent sniffling, throat clearing, or rubbing at the nose. You could also request an internal endoscopic examination to assess the severity of the allergy.
Diagnosis
You’ll need to give out the best response to the health vulnerability of your patient. Moreover, you’ll have four types of diagnoses: problem-focused, risk, health promotion, and syndrome.
Problem-focused diagnoses are based on observable issues during the assessment stage. Here, you’re to give out a diagnosis that’s related to seasonal allergies and their symptoms. Risk diagnosis highlights how a problem doesn’t exist yet, but there are risk factors that could lead to a problem emerging in the long run.
For health-promotion diagnosis, your main goal is to increase your patient’s potential at various levels like individual, group, or community. Lastly, syndrome diagnosis happens when a cluster of diagnoses occurs concurrently but can be addressed with one intervention.
Planning
It would help if you created your SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals based on evidence-based practices. Since a physician makes the medical diagnosis, your role will be to plan realistic goals that meet the needs of your patients. Suppose a patient with seasonal allergies is having difficulty breathing. In that case, one goal could be identifying the allergen and teaching the patient and parents how to administer a nasal spray correctly.
Implementation
After planning, it’s time to implement your goals and perform these interventions with the knowledge of a head physician. Here, you’ll need to acquaint yourself with interventions such as pain assessment, listening, cluster care, preventing falls, changing the resting position, and fluid consumption.
Evaluation
In the last step, you, a fellow nurse, or a doctor can all evaluate the outcome of the care plan. You’re to determine whether the desired outcome has been met or whether you’ll need to adjust a few aspects of the care plan. If your patient isn’t staying long-term, consider making short-term and achievable goals.
Importance of A Nursing Care Plan
Although you’re unable to provide medication, a nursing care plan is crucial to document the immediate needs and wants of the patient and how you can meet those needs quickly during their hospitalization. Your care plan is a continuity of care that furthers a patient’s physical and social intervention plans.
Final Thoughts
Whether it be seasonal allergies or not, a nursing care plan is a helpful tool to help identify problems and symptoms and how to act effectively and accurately to relieve such symptoms. Moreover, take these steps to heart as a future medical practitioner!